


Charlism, its ceremonies, its followers

by Judith H (Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes)



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Domestic Bliss, Drabbles, Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Erik is a Sweetheart, Idiots in Love, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Tenderness, Translation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:22:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28160877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes/pseuds/Judith%20H
Summary: A ragbag of little vignettes, some ridiculously serious or blasphemous,  sweet or smutty, but all are wrote four hands with no other link between themselves than being a tribute to Erik and Charles, those men in love, whom Marcel Proust would have called in another place and another time,Charlistes.(That's a codename for gay men in Proust'sRemembrance of Things Past, which is a pretty coincidence if we think of it, isn't it?)Updated thrice a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 75
Kudos: 12





	1. Nez

**Author's Note:**

  * For [admamu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/admamu/gifts).
  * A translation of [Le Charlisme, ses cérémonies et ses adeptes.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25849849) by [admamu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/admamu/pseuds/admamu), [Judith H (Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes/pseuds/Judith%20H). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nose • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

At his groin, a confluence of scents, in the pit of his arm, a confederacy of smells. Detergent, of course, but also that perfume specific to linen, a clean and dry scent compromised by the suffocating heat of that summer day during which he had sweated. Not a heavy and greasy sweat but a sweat more like the juice of an overripe watermelon, a colourless river. The smell of his skin on which there was something left of his aftershave, where one could also smell already a dash of debauchery, like a praeludium to flesh yet unconsummated, however already eager.


	2. Minéralogie (ou plus prosaïquement : étude de la peau de l'un par la main de l'autre)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mineralogy (or more prosaïcally: a study of the skin of one by the hand of the other) • **Rating: M** • Written by admamu

Under Charles' fingers run the stones by Erik laid. Immobile are they and yet, dancing, rugged with protruding edges, powdered, leaving on his skin a white dust. With his palm he wraps a bigger block, its odd concave rotundity, made of soft friable limestone. In a gap, where no light shines because stones are so well sealed that between them nothing goes, he slides a playful finger. "Will you stop?" says Erik, losing patience. "As long as your dream hold out...", he replies, teasing him. On the marble streaked in red, his hand goes on and on, resolutely claiming ownership.


	3. Yeux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eyes• **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

The cottage was sparingly furnished but everything here was for its owner's viewing pleasure. The owner sat cross-legged on the red tiles polished by time and use. Outside, the yellowing vines shone in gold, the grapes saturated with sugar to the point of bursting were stuffing themselves with the last sun beams. Lenhsherr was all eyes on Charles while Charles was all on his pleasure, sat on the straw chair. Charles, telling him all about what he felt, how intense was the pleasure he was giving himself while Erik was not even allowed to brush him. It was very good.


	4. Art floral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Floral arrangement • **Rating: T** • Written by admamu

* * *

Between the pages of Genet, he slipped a violet, offered by Charles a morning in July. Wilde, fickle and reliable, welcomed a carnation fallen from his boutonnière. The sweet briar had been a minimum offence to Charles' fingers, pink pearls on which his mouth feasted, ended in Miss Austen. Little Marcel, adored and recited, received irreverently the tribute of peppermint where somewhere else and in a similarly audacious way, Erik was allowed to taste that flavour with his docile tongue. In Rimbaud, dark teenager and seafarer, ran aground the wilted petals of roses, lips of the cherished skin, figures of his taken heart.


	5. Langue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tongue • **Rating: T** • Written by Judith

Black olives, tomatoes ripe to perfection, green olives in brine, he was finding here the remnants and ghosts of the meal they had shared a few hours before. A taste of salt on his tongue. At his mercy. He understands better why there is no dessert but he smiles when his vis-a-vis ventures to the kitchen, shirt open, bare feet on the chilly tiles, to fetch one of those peaches so soft that as soon as they are sliced open, leak in a golden juice, sugary, sweet, heady. It made his head spin more surely than wine.


	6. Piédestal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pedestal • **Rating: M** • Written by admamu •   
> Biblical allusions

Charles' bare feet, on the ochre tile thoroughly washed down that morning where his pace is made languid, leave a watery track. Charles' bare feet propped on the ledge of the chair when with his knees folded as he speaks, huddled up like a child opening to tell a story. Charles's bare feet jumping about the terrace and shooting up while in the moonlight he dances. Charles' bare feet, so dirty that Erik won't allow him to climb on his white sheets and so that, plunged into an enamelled basin, he washes them. Charles's feet, clean, that Erik kisses religiously.


	7. Afieroma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afieroma • **Rating: M** • Written by admamu

In the Peloponnese, after having crossed the Corinth Canal or was it on the slopes of the Mount Parnassus on the way to Delphi, mandatory stop to admire the sea of olive trees below, the shimmer of the little leaves delighting Charles, the sturdy convertible wore out and stopped dead. While waiting for the tow truck that Erik went to fetch at the neighbouring village, one had to keep busy. On the roadside, door open, Charles silently made good use of his oratory talents. Naked bum on the burning leather seat, a bit embarrassed, Erik laughed. Facing him: an oratory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Afieroma are little oratories build on the side of Greek roads.


	8. Toucher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Touch • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

Starting from the bottom, one will kiss the sole of that always bare foot (except when confined to the supple leather of an Oxford shoe). One will now take off the trousers, languidly climb up the leg after a shadow of a stop on the malleolus scattered with hairs that one will have kissed. Then, the firm, fleshy, hairy calf. He loves the stairs for the view on Erik's bum but there is still much to do. Now we shall ascend: a round, full hip, moist like brown bread. because while he is pallid, his skin was not uniformly white.


	9. Toucher II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Touch II • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

Ribs one barely feel yet very present, one climbs to tiny mounts, erected by a desire that grips him like a bite. It's painful. But it is good. Pause. Nose in the armpit. The flesh lumpy, salty, not a kiss, an olfactory contemplation that takes forever in the axillary. The forearm is tender, a kiss of an infinite gentleness while one goes down the arm where the white skin was earlier hidden by a shirt with elegantly rolled up sleeves. One keeps going very slowly. The stroll ends in taking an inquisitive middle finger in a greedy and teasing mouth.


	10. Lingere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lingere • **Rating: E Rimming** • Written by admamu

"Hands flat, facing the wall, don't move" he orders firmly. When Charles Xavier has a fancy, it's better to yield, especially when that fancy and said firmness have a single objective: to serve you. And so, Erik, floating shirt and of his bottoms disrobed, legs uncertain and dignity disappeared, obtemperates. In the obliquity of his waist two robust hands with short thumbs adjust themselves, caressing his loins. The Oxfords squeak, Charles crouches. On Erik's rump, a breeze, on his left cheek, kisses invite themselves. Soon, in the hot and moist gutter of his bum, a tongue is busy. He shivers.


	11. Coquetterie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daintiness • **WRating: K+** • Written by admamu

On the Regency dressing table bequeathed by his beloved and late grandmother, his things were scattered. The large oval boar hair brush mixing with the combs: a large one made of horn for his hair, a smaller one for his moustache. The steel of the pointed-tip scissors that he used to trim his beard shone in his deft hand. From a thick glass jar, he took a pat of cream to anoint his hands and smooth his brow. Behind his ears, at the crook of his wrists, he dropped hints of jasmine. That night, Charles Xavier would seduce Erik Lehnsherr.


	12. Ses mains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His hands • **Rating: T** • Written by admamu

His hands were neither thin nor quietly virile. Either thinness or virility would have been appreciated, because it would have placed him in the desirable spectrum of nobility, while he'd learned to move them with grace, putting in the mobility of his wrist the sweetest elegance, they were a source of renewed annoyance when under his eyes there were his short and podgy fingers, his rustic palms, his nails hunched up in such a way that one could think at his great dismay that he bit them secretly, they changed miraculously when to his vexed and lethal descriptive that was "ugly", a soft-hearted Erik opposed a magical "pretty".


	13. Rituel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ritual • **Rating: K+** • Written by Judith

From the little wire meshed cupboard nested in the whitewashed wall, he retrieved two large centenary china bowls that he put on the solid oak table, got out the damasked napkins, last remains of the trousseau of a grandmother with the linen sheets in which Charles was still sleeping. Then, he got himself busy preparing the brew that would bring back to life his lover to whom sleep was something sacred. Without grace, Charles was clutching to the feather bolster, beard and hair in a mess. When he got up at the stroke of ten, coffee was waiting for him.


	14. Habitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Habit • **Rating: K** • Written by Judith

Even though technology would have allowed him to save some valuable time, Charles insisted he would keep his blue Olivetti Lettera 32 and its case, as blue as was the typewriter. Of that exercise, he loved the toughness of the keys under his short fingers, to feel that each word would come with some effort and that they won't come with the fineness that was said to be the main quality of some contemporary novels Charles hold in contempt. Only one thing that could be fine, according to Charles' criteria : flour, to avoid spoiling sauces or the crêpe batter.


	15. Littérature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Literature • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

_In my dreams I kiss your prick, your hard wet prick. In my thoughts I make love to you all night long._

The message was on the pillow and if the text had been a bit hesitant it was because the hand which had typed it wasn't use to the whims of the Olivetti.

Charles saw it when he was changing himself. Erik forbade it and so Charles kept his shirt, spread like a fan, the rain of freckles on his belly like checkpoints to be reached.

It is unnecessary to say that Erik did live up to his promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little twist on _Atonement_


	16. Déluge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the Flood • **Rating: T** • Written by admamu

During the sweltering night, the storm broke. For some freshness they had yearned for these last few days: their bodies and minds, drained by the heat, a damning migraine never leaving Charles, all the windows were open. The heavens would have none of it and to some cooling down, preferred a downpour. The house was flooded, whipped by the heavy curtain of the rain. Woke with a start, they fought valiantly, brandishing mops and brooms. When, after Erik's fastidiousness judged the house dry enough, Charles went out. At the blessed rain, he offered, arms stretched out, his worn out body.


	17. Lecture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reading • **Rating: K** • Written by admamu

In the evening, they would read. Outside in deckchairs by candlelight, inside in old wing-back chairs, drinking herbal teas, one would open books, punctiliously chosen on the shelves or ordered at the bookshop. Often, one reread for the pleasure to hear the cherished voice say again with the tone and modalities needed the beloved texts that had punctuated a long shared history. If Erik read solemnly without much emphasis, Charles read with an effusive conviction. And so all ended on that: saying their mass, the little darling lulling his love to sleep.


	18. Bondieuseries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanctimonious • **Rating: M** • Written by admamu  
> Religious imagery

Charles loved holy images, he collected them. But to the bland ones of a puritan catechism he preferred the moving images of Caravaggio and Botticelli: Christs in torment and beaming, John the Baptists, sensual and vigorous, red-haired and delicate angels of undetermined gender. At his great dismay, Erik, Jewish and communist, was insensitive to that imagery. However, one evening, while the second was buggering the first, he had under his eyes the most perfect figuration of an active and supreme submission with hooded eyelids. He was converted at once. Later, Erik took Charles to Genoa so that he saw at Palazzo Bianco his perfect portrait.

Detail from Caravagio's _Ecce Homo_


	19. Potemkine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Potemkine • **Rating: K** • Written by admamu

Erik was a Communist. To the monstrosity of the gulag, to Prague, and Cuban jails, he opposed the Paris Commune, the Potemkin Mutiny, the Red Poster, Mexican guerrilleros. He insisted that humankind had stumbled, but that it didn't diminish the dignity of the struggle nor the ideal that had to be reached. Except if one was dry-hearted and had a paltry soul, one couldn't help but believe him and fight alongside him. To Charles, those political inflexibilities missed some Romanesque. And so he wrote the story of a fiery red-headed Revolutionary. Erik groaned to be so recuperated. Charles didn't care.


	20. Week-end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weekend • **Rating: T** •Written by admamu

It is cold. It is grey. They decide to stay in bed. The duvet is warm, the pillows, soft. On the bedside tables books are piling, one is reading again Baldwin, the other, Keats. They eat, one crumbles his bread, the other groans. They listen to Dalida, the one who always changes the records is the one who's dancing. They don't have a wash, one is laughing, the other is madly in desire. They make love, not at night, but in the morning or in the afternoon. At night, they confide things never said. They lounge, they daydream, they doze. They are never bored.


	21. La rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rose• **Rating: K** • Written by admamu

The rose was wilted, offered earlier by a feverish hand, passion visible in the grey eyes, but souvenir is nothing when overcame by absence and his gaze loses his spirit facing the yellowing petals. In the empty flat, he roves, idle, the other gone, his scent and hand ever present: on the couch, a lonely scarf, in a cup an old mouldy coffee, an open book waiting to be picked up. At last, keys in the lock, his heart flutters. How long did that painful hell last? A week, would say a clear-headed Erik. Forever, Charles would correct, his mouth closed and comforted by cheerful kisses.


	22. Gare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Train Station• **Rating: T** • Written by Judith

The first time, it was in the toilets at Gare du Nord station. Charles (and thirty kids in tow) was ready to board in the Eurostar. The snog had been monumental, worthy of the teenagers they no longer were, the Englishman crooked teeth had clinked heavily against Erik's and Erik had greedily devoured his throat. He, he did not mind, he had a turtle-neck jumper. But Charles, always wicked, decided to goad Erik, to give him wants that would seem unsatisfiable without him.


	23. Gare II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Train station II • **Rating: T** • Written by Judith

When they met again, Summer's here and it's Waterloo station. It was people being suspicious. Concerned too, concern everywhere. Charles looking a bit older, a bit more grave. It was whispers and anxieties. It was Charles, a bit shaky after love. Not just the usual sobs. It was a vague melancholy, a bit sticky, that haunted him like doubt sometimes gripping the heart in ashen early mornings. It was Erik holding him in his arms and who during a long time, cried with him. After the tears, it was as if one had opened a window. And Charles breathed again.


	24. Passer à la casserole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the back burner• **Rating: T** • Written by Judith

The flat, actually, more of a studio, was quite small. Erik was still a bit lanky, could have banged against everything. He did bang everywhere, even against the railing of the brass bed in which Charles and himself huddled to sleep each night of his London stay. In the morning, it was Charles in the tiny kitchen above the diminutive hotplate trying to cook some scrambled eggs without burning them. Which was no easy task, because Erik's sole presence was enough to distract him, Charles was a terrible cook. But fortunately, they did manage to salvage the toast.


	25. Vieilleries I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old things I • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

One day, much later, somewhere else, in a big house in the country, theirs. Green shutters a bit faded, old stone walls keeping at bay the stifling heat of the summer. Charles still has his luxuriant mane, now greying, his beard, still a bit red, tangles in Erik's. Erik is stooping a tad, especially when he is tired, but Erik still slipping himself between Charles' legs. Tasting him with the same greedy appetite he had when they were twenty. It takes just a bit longer, it will last a tad longer. But it loses nothing on how good it is.


	26. Vieilleries II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old Things II • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

It was the house's original tilling, pink flowers in their bedroom. A clean airy room where the gauze curtains whirlwind in the nascent dawn. Their bodies still heavy with sleep. In the morning, love like a tenderness. Breakfast before coffee, a dessert before lunch, a treat. Long and slow caresses, one is not trying to climax, one is not looking for pleasure, one is only touching to love, touching because one loves the grain of the beloved skin under the shaky fingers. One nestles in the arms where one can snuggle up for a luxuriating moment, a moment of tenderness.


	27. Fleur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flower • **Rating: M** • Written by Judith

Thinking of the pleasures Charles would not give him was enough for Erik. It sufficed to imagine those wants he would repress, gifted with a prodigious imagination, he was enjoying the absence. Truly, he also enjoyed the presence. But from absence, his pleasures were different, in the delay, in the fact that they were delayed, his enjoyment was even more important. Like those letters one expects and once they are received, we keep them on the desk, just a bit too far to be reached at once. Just like that, his desire needed to grow before being able to bloom.


	28. Goûts Doux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet tastes • **Rating: K+** • Written by Judith

It was a fruit, a fruit which had stayed in the sun during the hottest days of a forever summer and so it had gorged itself with that heat, that made it burst under the pleasure of being so exposed on its branch. Close at hand from the hand which had for it all the deference, caressing it with care, that was worthy of being tasted. And teeth dug effortlessly in the soft sweet flesh, almost like jam already, not even resisting and yet under its violet skin affirming its presence. Here and now, it was all good and well.


	29. Goûts Doux II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet Tastes II • **Rating: T** • Written by Judith

It was not far from Avignon, where the sun heats the stone, in the little fenced garden. There was that fig tree with leaves like green hands above their heads. Charles leaned against the sort of trunk that was kinda twisted and barely stretching out his arm covered in an aqua shirtsleeve to get hold of fruits ripe to perfection. Sometimes, when the fig had had too much sun, the juice left the bottom of the fruit, running on his pallid English skin and Erik drank at that source with delectation and then, climbing up the arm, took a bite.


	30. Les inconvénients des figues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Figs and their disadvantages • **Rating K+** • Written by admamu

All figs had been eaten, wrecking Charles' bowels and Erik's shirt: the first as he had eaten too much of the fruit, ending the day unhappily bound to the loo, he was also responsible of the shirt wreck as he stained it while climbing down from the tree, his fingers all sticky from the sap. One ate rice to soothe his stomach pain while the other rinsed in vain his shirt. They took comfort in a new game they had just invented: with one's tongue, one had to dislodge the grains stuck between one's teeth even after the vespertine toothbrushing.


	31. La fin de l'été

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of Summer • **Rating: K** • Written by admamu

When all that was left to pick was the white grape of the wild vine, it was the end of the summer. In the evenings, the sun had bad manners, urgencies, it hurried to go to bed. The forest grew red to keep him, in vain. At the horizon, it put a last veil, of a hazy yellow, and then disappeared to Charles' great sorrow, scandalised that he was of that indelicacy. Not only did it left like a boor who would have left a shindig before it was time to, it took with itself the warmth: it was no longer possible to stay the night on the terrace. So they resigned and they too, left.


	32. La fin de l'été. Suite.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of Summer.Afterwards• **Rating: K** • Written by admamu

Under Erik's tutelage, they cleaned. "Why? Aren't we the only ones coming here?"..." Alright, give me the duster". They unmade the bed, turned off the water supply, put away the deckchairs, closed the shutters. Early in the morning the day of the departure, Charles stood, facing the landscape, engaging in private prayer, misty-eyed: not only they were leaving the house, but kisses, songs, drinking sessions, communal sloth. They snick off so as to not be caught up, held up by those ghosts. But the ghosts climbed up in the convertible's boot with the suitcases so as to not be forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> While every kudos and hit is a treat, I would be very glad if you, dear visitor, were to tell me what you think of these little drabbles. Have a lovely day!


End file.
